Location based policy and/or charging control as well as location based services (LBSs) are ever-increasingly popular for mobile terminals such as User Equipment (UE) in wireless communication networks, and provide enormous value to both telecom operators, 3rd party service providers and also to end-users. However, mechanisms to report User Location Information (ULI) or similar location data for mobile terminals are scattered across different communication paths, which creates a complex set-up for network entities to report, collect, and process such information. Further, in existing deployments, when location requests are performed by the various entities for UEs, sever congestion can occur in core network nodes.
Location dependent charging was introduced in 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) technology for General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) access in Global System for Mobile communications (GSM), and subsequently for Long Term Evolution (LTE) network access, where mobility management nodes, e.g. a Mobility Management Entity (MME) and/or a Serving General Packet Service Support Node (SGSN), report any change in UE location or similar location data when such report is subscribed by a node such as for instance a Policy and Charging Rules Function (PCRF), a Packet Data Network Gateway (PGW), a Gateway General Packet Service Support Node (GGSN), etc.
Further, to facilitate Internet Protocol Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) services, the mobility management nodes shall provide current UE location or similar location data during any session management signalling when the UE is in 3GPP access, which typically is requested by a so called Proxy-Call Session Control Function (P-CSCF).
Recently, user location reporting or reporting of similar location data is enhanced with introducing Presence Reporting Area concept, where the mobility management nodes shall report to the PCRF/PGW when UE changes presence (i.e. enters/leaves) the Presence Reporting Area. The Presence Reporting Area is an area defined within the 3GPP Packet Domain for the purposes of reporting of UE presence within that area due to policy control and/or charging reasons.
In the location reporting mechanism in the art, the reporting is undertaken per UE and Packet Data Network (PDN) connection, which imposes a tremendous amount of signalling over the packet core network. In addition, different network entities, e.g. PCRF, P-CSCF, Gateway Mobile Location Centre (GMLC), etc., use different mechanisms, different signalling paths, and different signalling procedures to request the mobility management nodes to report UE location, and the implication of the requests may change when the UE changes its location, which adds more signalling and processing load in the core network nodes. There is thus a need to improve the approach of performing UE location in the art.